Naked Ambition: An R Rated Look at an X Rated Industry June 1, 2011

Since I started to feel like butt, I ended up tapping out of work early today. I was in the mood for more passive entertainment, so I figured up Netflix to see what new movies are available, and this caught my eye:

So what the hell I thought, I fired it up and watched it.

I have a real love-hate relationship with popular pornography. On the one hand, hooray sex – because everyone should have a healthy and happy sex life, and it’s one of the most amazing gifts that we, as humans, are given. There are so many ways that consensual sex can enrich your life in ways that we, as a society, traditional refuse to even consider out of puritanical hysteria. On the other hand, it’s as Dan Savage put it: It’s Kabuki sex. It’s not real, and it helps to perpetuate unhealthy stereotypes and attitudes that are harmful at a fundamental level. Love it or hate it, the porn industry is the outgrowth and mirror of our society’s attitudes about sex, and examining it is self-examination as much as it is trying to understand it. By examining the AVN convention and annual award show, there’s a chance to a filmmaker to craft a narrative that informs us about our own relationship with our sexual nature as much as it is to examine an incredibly fascinating, if eyebrow-raising subculture.

This is not that film.

It wants to be, oh how it does – it wants that smiley-face on the homework and a GOOD JOB sticker in the worst way. But as much as it markets itself as such, more than anything it’s a story about the photographer/documenter’s role as the official role as the photographer of the 2006 AVN award show. And as such, when you do start to get into compelling stories about not just the performers, but the people who make of the chain of production in the adult industry, you’re suddenly yanked onto a different track – a narrative about the photographer’s quest. And while that’s often interesting, it’s also self-serving and distracting as hell.  And as the movie goes on and leads into covering the actual awards ceremony, things become more and more unreal and less about the surprising people who are making innovative adult entertainment, and into the glaring hyper-cartoonish world of hyper-exaggerated everything. And while it’s expected and understandable – after all, they’re parading for their fans and giving them what they want – it would have been far more interesting and touching if the filmmaker had worked harder at coaxing the true personalities out of his subjects, instead of a mostly-cursory effort.

It is worth a watch for at least the first half of the film, because meeting the fringe folks and entrepreneurs of porn is fascinating as hell. And seeing some of the performers drop the mask, even ever so slightly, is something that I’m always going to find fascinating no matter what industry/subculture they’re part of.

And if nothing else, it’s worth it for just the first five minutes to meet the enthusiastic inventor of what can only be described as a pneumatic disco-dildo operated by what looks like a briefcase nuke-console.